Archive for the ‘Wintergrasp’ Category

Would you believe it? I’m playing WoW again. Damned game. So, what am I up to?

For one thing, I’m toying with the Mists of Pandaria beta. Cool so far, but anything other then the new Pandaran areas crash on me.

I’m also playing allot of pvp. Recently I’ve had a good run, with (I believe) my first win in Arathi Basin – which I also happened to film, so I have record – and back-to-back wins in Tol Barad and Wintergrasp. The AB match was one of my best. I was lethal and only died once, and that was from falling off a ledge near the lumber mill to my doom.

I was in Tol Barad the other morning, and with us on defense is wasn’t all that hard. I died three times but we won handily. One of the group called for us all to rush to Wintergrasp, and who am I to say no to that? I love Wintergrasp.

We won that handily, too. There were only about five of us there total but the dumb group leader I was with insisted I had invite privileges (which I didn’t) so I couldn’t group with the rest of the bunch. I died once when I got ganged up on in the fort and another time to a tough Blood Elf pally, but I respawned quickly right nearby so I came back and killed her while she fought an ally.

So, I’m playing WoW now and again. You can also go to Chaos is Gaming and read an article on me introducing a friend of mine to the game. Later!

Finally. It had been too long. Absence, as they say, can make the heart grow fonder. I had to do it.

I had to hit up Wintergrasp one last time.

I’ll likely never got back after Cataclysm launches on Tuesday so I wanted to go back and have one more great match. What I got started out abysmally slow, but ended up being perhaps my favorite match ever.

Blizzard now regulates the number of participants to create even matches, and at the start there were exactly four Alliance players, with me playing Raid Leader. We took everything that was able to be captured in the first five minutes, and then stood around and stared at each other. Finally we got organized and I led the most coordinated, communicative, and well-organized Wintergrasp defense I’d ever seen. Everyone was in touch, and we had all our bases covered, so to speak. Now, if only there was someone to fight.

I was running through the Broken Temple factory (seen above) when I noticed our control had gone down to 50%. A Draenei priest tipped me off that there was a hidden rogue near by. We smoked out the undead rogue and killed him. Finally some action! Not long after things picked up with an Orc hunter, a troll shaman, a blood elf mage, an Orc Death Knight and some others joining the fray. It was time to put out organization to the test. We pinged our foes on the mini map to keep tabs on them. I was once under assault by the death knight, hunter and mage all at once at the Broken Temple (where most of the action took place) when my allies rode to my rescue. I did the same later, bailing out our Draenei priest buddy who called for help since he was specced for healing.

At one point I caught a troll shaman in the open and began to attack her. It turned out she was a restoration-specced shammy.

Kudos to you, Sisstah – you were (to be blunt) a freaking pain in the ass to kill. My saving grace was having my Draenei priest buddy (God, I wish I knew his name, I think it was Judgeandjury but don’t quote me on that) along for the ride. He healed me some and kept her fire elemental busy while I finally laid the smack down. This was a long and tedious freaking fight. She didn’t do allot of damage but she’d keep healing her stupid ass. Finally, two-on-one was too much and she fell. My big ‘hoorah’ moment came when I tried to take a siege engine down to one of the towers.

This dumb, apparently suicidal Orc hunter kept attacking my ride! I tried to tell him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him that it was in his best interest to leave me in the tank – I was much more dangerous to him on foot. He ultimately broke my ride, at which point he and his crocolisk assailed me. I was down to 15% health so I bubbled, healed to 80% and proceeded to beat the ever loving tar out of him. Ha! Gav: 1, stupid-ass Orc: 0.

I’m back finally. I’ve been playing allot but not taking many pictures so that’s partially why I’ve been slow to post. Anyway, here’s what Gav’s been up to since patch 4.0.1 hit.

I hit up Wintergrasp as soon as I could and had a ball. I died once, but that was it as we blitzed the Horde in an offensive siege. Word of Glory is a God send sometimes in PvP. I also really dig Blizzard’s new raid frames. They worked wonders in Wintergrasp and eliminated my need for the plugin Grid.

Today I joined my first post-4.0.1 random heroic and it was obvious that I was rusty. It’s been almost a month since my last heroic dungeon, but that’s no excuse for forgetting to take down Crusader Aura for Retribution. I also wasn’t thinking and tried to cast Blessing of Kings on everybody (like I used to have to) when a single cast now covers the entire group. I actually needed to cast Might instead because our druid was already covering out stat buff. It was uneventful until our healer died during a bad pull. Fortunately for us our tank was a blood-specced death knight and all of the DPS could self-heal so we survived. Our druid even battle-rezzed our healer. Go team! I nabbed the Lodi Dodi and King’s Bane achievements on this run as well. It was a good night.

For whatever reason I opted to ride WoW down to the server shutdown tonight, enjoying my last action in the Wrath of the Lich King, patch 3.x era. I have amazing memories from this series of patches. I went hit levels 60, 70 and 80 during these patches. One of my very first posts here covered the changes in the original Wrath content patch. I ran my first dungeon, heroic dungeon and raid during these patches. I fought my first battlegrounds during the 3.x run, and of course, I fought relentlessly in Lake Wintergrasp.

Actually, that’s one of the things I did while riding the Wrath patches to their end. The Alliance again successfully repelled the Horde, even though they had a tenacity of 10x (and health in the 100k range). I went as prot again and had fun. Once that was over, though, I opted to go to Ironforge to wait to train.

While waiting for the server to shut down, I fished for Old Ironjaw. No luck, as you would imagine.

There Gav now sits, waiting for the servers to go live with patch 4.0.1 so he can train his new skills. What will he do with them first? Maybe Wintergrasp again, maybe a random heroic. Only time will tell – and the time will come tomorrow.

I returned to Wintergrasp twice yesterday. The first match was epically boring, because we had 25+ players and we saw a total of three members of the Horde: a death knight, a warlock and a paladin. That led them to have over 130k health a piece! It was like taking on some crazy elite mob. That made it hard to get siege engines to drop their towers (we were on defense) because there was just about no one to kill. We did though, and kind of just chilled until the timer ran out. It was the most lame WG match I’d ever been in

The seconds match I attended was more even. I got my 5,000th honorable kill this match, which is kinda lame for how often I do WG. We again chased the Horde around the map, slaying them left and right. Afterwards, I found myself exactly 2 stone keeper shards from my Black War Mammoth. Again, for how often I play WG I probably should have already had one, but I used to cash in my stone keeper shards for honor, and a couple hundred went toward heirlooms for my alts. Still, I’m almost there now.

I found myself in Wintergrasp twice the other morning, once as my prot PvP spec and once as my main ret PvE spec (because I was in a hurry). The first match – the one I joined as PvP – was a thorough butt kicking of the Horde. We had them pinned down to their graveyard and just slaughtered them every time they rezzed. It was fun! I did really well too, and only died once, killing – or helping kill – dozens of the Horde.

The second match (the one I joined while ret) wasn’t so pretty, but it was more entertaining. I joined a little late, only about three minutes late, but already it was a disaster. The Horde was in the eastern side of the keep! After dying over and over again, we finally accrued enough manpower to stand up to them (our numbers started out pretty low for whatever reason). We finally pushed them out of the east side of the keep and down to the Sunken Ring workshop. I and a number of allies then rode back to hold off an attack on the west side of the keep. They got in there, too, but that’s all the farther they got. We had actually dropped all of their towers, but that still left us with 10 minutes to hold out, and we did it. Yes!

I’m back at last with a non-Cataclysm-related post. I wanted to catch folks up on where my characters are.

Lug and Pig are now level 29. I’m almost to my current goal, level 30! Lug still has those heirloom shoulders so leveling hasn’t been real bad. He’s been in the Hillsbrad Foothills allot lately, taking a break from Thousand Needles. That place is not allot of fun to me.

Gav was in Wintergrasp again today. I did ok, dying twice – once one-on-one to an Orc rogue, which never should have happened except that I was 90% asleep at the time. I had him dead to rights and couldn’t finish him off. Dammit. While running back after that death, WoW froze and crashed. When I logged back in, the battle was down to 45 seconds and everyone was just chilling in the courtyard. WTF happened to the Horde? No one was fighting, and I had been standing in one of the side areas of the fortress when my game froze and came back to find myself alive. Weird.

With the honor I earned in WG, I went to Stormwind and bought a mount I’ve wanted for a long, long time – a Black Battlestrider. I wanted one the first time I saw one but they used to cost Battleground tokens. No more! A mere 50k honor and it’s mine. Gav’s happy now.

I ran Azjol’ Nerub tonight with a decent PUG, but the final boss gave us trouble. At one point our tank was dying and the healer (a dwarf priest) was struggling to keep up with the damage, so I pitched in with my Flash of Light spell. On another occasion, after a wave of mobs in that battle, our DPS warrior was down to 20% health. Our healer was busy doing who-knows-what (he seemed to think that healing the tank was his only job) so I was going to hit the warrior with a Sacred Shield and then a Flash of Light, but then the boss popped back up. With no time left, I fired off my Lay on Hands spell to put the warrior right. We then finished off the boss as I activated Avenging Wrath to lay the ‘smack down’, as they say.

This was after a Wintergrasp match where I notched a slew of kills and only died once. With a rather balanced match, the Horde had little to no tenacity, making the battles easier. The other day I was in Wintergrasp to see about buying some stuff with my Stone Keeper’s Shards when I was jumped by a Tauren shaman. He hit me with Thunderstorm and caught me off guard. When I finally realized what was happening, I was down to 40% health. Fortunately, I was still on my gryphon so I flew away to heal. When I got back, he was pulling the same trick on a few other players. I landed behind him, and it was Hammer of Justice, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, Hammer of Wrath, game over. Seriously, it was one of those kills where it was over before the stun wore off. I hate those when I’m on the receiving end, but proud when I pull it off. This after whopping that Orc warrior in WG the other day. I think I can somewhat hold my own one-on-one with an average-skill or lower PvP player these days. Not bad, says I.

Oh yeah, and that PUG I mentioned at the start? I got a Pug for that PUG, thanks to an achievement. Nice!

I then wandered back into Dalaran, and opted to go to Wintergrasp and see about maybe joining a Vault of Archavon raid. I didn’t, but while I was sitting peacefully in Wintergrasp Fortress’ inner sanctum, I was jumped by an Orc warrior. He got me pretty beat up, but I got to the transporter and escaped outside the inner room to heal. I buffed myself up and then headed back in to face him one-on-one in a fair match. He was pounding on an AFK dwarven hunter, so I hit him with Hammer of Justice and promptly beat him down. Yes! The dwarf gave me a high five as he got back to his keys while I was finishing the Orc. With healing spells, a good stun, and strong melee powers (plus the ever-popular bubble), some days it’s good to be a paladin.

This morning was rather boring. I ran three heroics – Oculus, Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom and Gundrak. The Oculus run was interesting since there was no synergy in our group – everyone was kind of doing their own thing, but it came together to make a win. In Ahn’Kahet, I nabbed the achievement Volazj’s Quick Demise for my troubles. In Gundrak, we stormed the place and were done in no time. Then the most interesting part of my morning happened: I went to Wintergrasp.

For the first time in quite a while, I queued up for a Wintergrasp match. The battle saw the Alliance with a near full raid while the Horde attack consisted of – no lie! – less then 10 players. They wound up with Tenacity x20, which made things harder. I was getting crit for 15k a shot! We eventually got our act together and moved in large packs since the Horde players weren’t going in groups. I don’t care how much tenacity you have – 10 on 1 is bad odds. Or good odds. Depends on which side your on.

In any case, our battle took around 10 minutes, but that’s all I needed to die four times. It was odd, really, that most of the Horde were Blood Elf paladins. They had like one warlock and a warrior, and then a handful of Blood Elf pallys. One in particular was really vicious, accounting for half of my deaths and a ton of other player kills. Still, even he folded under our massive population advantage. Death to the Horde! lol

Hi, I’m Alphasim . I’ve been playing World of WarCraft for four years now and my main is a level 85 human paladin named Gavelier. Gav features prominently here at Alazar so you'll get to know him and his guild.

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